Seollal

Seollal aka Korean's New Year aka Lunar New Year is around the corner and now that I'm in Korea there are MANY things I would like to do, but still, I have no plans for this year's 4 day Holiday.

1st of all, Seolla is the Lunar New Year and is one of the most celebrated Holidays in Korea -as well as Chuseok-, this year Seollal falls on January 31st of the Gregorian Calendar, this marks the beginning of a new year, unlike December 31st, this date is not a date to go out partying with your friends; it's about Paying respect to our ancestors and gather around with your family to catch up, most Koreans travel to reunite with their family. Hanbok is used for this day and games are played when the family is together but even if you don't have plans to celebrate this important holiday, you should be ready.

Most people is getting ready, supermarkets are crowded and gift sets are everywhere, not only people is getting their gifts but groceries as most places will be closed on Jan 30-31st. According to VisitKorea's website the most popular gifts are: For parents: ginseng, honey, health products, and massage chairs. Other common gifts include toiletries such as shampoo, soap, toothpaste, etc. and gift baskets/sets composed of Spam, tuna, hangwa (traditional sweets and cookies), dried fish or fruits.

photo: www.advancedtechnologykorea.com 

Although I have no plans for these days, I know I should be ready, me, my sis and some friends wanted to go out of the city but I was told that would be a HUGE mistake as trafic will be crazy with people driving to meet their families, so, No traveling for us this time since we didn't plan things with time -lol-.

You can read more about How Koreans celebrate Seollal here, sorry I can't give you the details on how to celebrate it the Korean Way but most likely I will spend it at home eating ramen and watching TV shows or maybe just drinking at home with friends -a bad habit we've taken lately-.

I'm sorry this post is so random, I'm freezing, the ondol is not doing anything for me and my annoying computer is worse than yesterday, my SHIFT key doesn't work and it's making things far more complicated than they should be...

If anyone ha any cool plans to celebrate, do let me know hehe.

-Gisela V.

PS. I read it's a tradition to give money to your unmarried relatives and since I'm not married yet, you can send me your presents hehehe.

Surviving Korea (more like, Loving Korea)

For some weird reason every time I seat in front of my computer to write I just can’t do it, I don’t know what to blog about and I get distracted easily… it sucks, I have been in Korea for 2 months and we’ve done quite a lot, the weird things is, we’ve been doing things we never did before, or things we haven’t really done in a while….

I’m not sure I will remember everything, but we’ve done the Touristy things available in Seoul, we went to chill by the Cheonggyechon stream, walked around Insadong, saw the royal guard change at the Gyeongbokgung Palace, ate Tteopokki in Tteopokki Town (I will never know how to Romanize that word, sorry), rented a Bike on a Sunday at Yeouido Park, Took the elevator to the 63 Building, strolled along the Han river, took the wrong bus (twice!) and ended up in the middle of nowhere at 10pm, Had Coffee at…well.. a lot of the Coffee shops in Seoul (Incluiding Audrey Hepburn's), Took a tour at the House of Sharing, Shopped and had Street food in Myeongdong, shopped some more in Dongdaemun, ate Hotteok in Nandaemun, went to festivals at the City Hall plaza, went clubbing in Gangnam, took the night bus (with lots of drunk people), went to a Korean wedding, assisted to weird festivals, flew to Jeju Island, got into TV shows, and pretty much everything that was on my Korean Bucket list, I guess I’ll just start with the Kpop things just to get them out of the way since we’ve done too many Kpop related things to be true….

Audrey Hepburn Cafe in Seoul 

Bongeunsa Temple in Gangnam 

Meeting a (not very noticable pregnant) friend

G-Dragon's exhibit

View from the 63 building

63 Tower in Chuseok (Bad idea, it was too crowded)

K-Style class in Myeongdong

Bibimbap with friends

National Museum of Contemporary Art 

Hi Seoul Street Festival (More like---Sky festival^^)

After the first 2NE1 Concert we went to, some more followed, lol… we have been biten by the Kpop bug, and I’m embarrassed to say, sometimes I would find myself singing songs by who knows who, anyway, we got to see 2NE1 live and for free (yet again), they performed at Seoul’s Time Square to film “something” (apparently that something was a part of an episode of the famous show “The Bachelor”), my sister found out about the show on the same day, just a couple of hours before, we had to have the Digital single in order to be allowed in, so, we of course got it, we got ready and 1 hour before it started we were ready and started our journey towards Times Square, we arrive just 5 minutes before, no one asked for the Single receipt (pft!), we got to be in the 1^st row and well… it was nice, I actually enjoyed it better than the 1^st one, must be because we didn’t have to wait a billion hours to get in and this time I got to really watch the performance instead of taking pictures like a mental person lol, the show was less than an hour and by 7pm we were on our way back home!

CL-shii (lol)

Dara and the "lucky" Mexican fan

After that my sister was hooked with 2NE1, she got songs not even I had O_o, she started following Dara on Twitter and that’s how she found out 2NE1 would be doing a “Flea Market” in one of the most fancy areas in Seoul Cheongdam-dong, so, of course we had to go since Dara said “prices would be really low going from 10,000 to 100,000’s” ha!, we arrived a little late (got scolded for it L lol) and ended up lining up for a bit over an hour on the 1^st freezing night of Seoul’s fall, I was even tempted to cross the street and get a sweatshirt at Chromes Heart but, I didn’t want to spend ALL of my money there lol, when we were close enough to go in, they wanted to let in just 1 of us (at the moment) but we said NO! and then this nice girl with the most perfect English and attitude came for us and let us in^^, by the time we got in the “good” and “cheap” stuff were gone, so we were actually just looking and checking if there was something we recognized (at least that’s what I was doing), I was checking the jackets until I heard someone yelling “DARA UNNIEEEEEEEEEE!!”, I turned around and she was there, next to me, so of course I hurried and asked her if we could take a picture together, she seemed to be scared because…well.. everyone was yelling her name, but she agreed and Diana came to take my pic and then she got hers, after that we left but not before thanking the girl for letting us in and have a nice conversation with her, all in all it was great, after that we of course Instagrammed/twitted our pictures with Dara and things went crazy (for a mortal like me), I started getting RT’s, Favorites, mentions, questions, etc, my phone stopped sending notifications and just gave up, by the time we reached home I had over 100 RT’s and then my sister’s pic was posted in a Fans site and mine was posted in a fans Instagram account (this photo got over 2,000 likes), it was CRAZY, people started asking where were we from and then one person saw my sis’ pic and recognized the lastname because she saw my previous picture with Dok2, we were then known as the “Verdin sisters” lol, it got to a point when people started saying the pictures were fake because apparently only Koreans can take pics with Korean Idols…

Dok2 & Gangsta Me (as if) @ the AOMG Launching Party

With Beenzino 

Some days before the Dara thing, we went to Jay Park’s AOMG party, we had RSVP’ed before but when we arrived things got weird, no one seemed to speak English, they didn’t have the RSVP list and decided to allow people in only if you had an app on your phone and showed them the invitation on the app, pft!, we had to download the app and then again they changed their minds, we had to line, they moved the lines and somehow we ended up at the back O_o, after asking them about what was going on and them not speaking English, they just let us in and even sent us to the VIP area… DAEBAK! Lol, the club was very 80’s, people in Korea is still allowed to smoke inside clubs, the music is not very good and people dance as if they were back in the 80’s, 90’s, once Ben Baller came into the stage to introduce Jay Park things got better and suddenly G-Dragon, Dara, CL, Lydia Paek and others were walking next to us to go to the stage, Jay sang a couple of songs with Dok2, and Beenzino and then G-Dragon and the rest went back to the 2^nd floor, I had G-dragon next to me for a minute but couldn’t articulate a word, so I just randomly touched his arm…yup, because I’m awkward like that LOL, after that even Justin Bieber was at the club with his DJ and he also did some DJing, so, it was pretty much THE place to be, I’m glad we got in, ah!, also, Diana got to say Hi to CL (finally!) haha, I got to meet Dok2 (he is so cute and so short!) and Beenzino.

I think for now this is MORE than enough, I’ll save the Seoul Fashion Week-GD’s mini concert, MBC Recording with Crayon Pop, FT Island (Aaaand that will be my last Kpop Post [maybe]) and the Jeju stories for later.

-Gisela V.

I love Korea because.....

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to share the video I made for the "I love Korea because..." contest

-Gisela V.